The Story of My Life
by LadyBranwen2012
Summary: A fic where 17 writes about what he remembers of his past. Dark and sad, another one that nearly made me cry while writing it! R&R Please!
1. Chapter 1

This is a story that Android 17 tells from his point of view about his life before he was turned into an android.  What I'm planning for right now is to write it for 17 from the present and then do another story that will be from Future 17 perspective.  So far, I'm not sure how that will work out and if I will continue with it on here or will create another story.  I have a lot of different ideas for the future one, though a lot of this stuff would be the same, but the future 17 will have a tad bit darker past...Let me know what you think!  Anyway, I don't know right now how long this one is going to be, but we'll see.  ^_^  Review and let me know what you think, please so I know if I should go on!

~Lady Branwen~

The Story of My Life

Chapter 1

Not many people know about me or my sister.   Sure, they know that we were androids, but they don't know who we used to be.  They only know about my sister who lives with that buffoon named Krillen.  No one seems to know or care what has become of me.  Only my sister visits every once in a while, Krillen and their child in tow.  But no one else cares to know where I am or how I'm doing.  They don't seem to understand me and probably they think that I've become paranoid and have retreated to the woods to be away from civilization.  In part, that's true.  I don't want to be bothered by anyone anymore.  Too much has happened to me for me to be able to forgive humanity.

We were born as Robert and Jennifer, but everyone called us Bobby and Jenny.  It's weird remembering that we had actual names before, not just 17 or 18.  It's strange even trying to call my sister Jenny, so when I talk about her from the past, I'll call her Jenny and when I'm talking about her now, I'll call her 18. Anyway, we lived in a small house with our parents, but even then, our life wasn't very good.  Our father was a drunk and would get violent sometimes.  I barely remember that far back, but one of the few things I remember is the fact that I hid a lot in the closet with Jenny.  I'm pretty sure that I knew every coat and cobweb in that closet better than I knew anything else in the house.  My father would always start arguments with my mom and they would argue for hours on end.  When things started to get bad, or I could just sense that things were going to get worse, I would grab Jenny's hand and run to the closet.  To me, it seemed like the safest place for me to go to.  During their fights, my parents would often throw things at each other.  One time a vase narrowly missed hitting Jenny on the head.  Ever since then, I would drag her somewhere safe where we would be out of the way and wouldn't get hurt at the first sign of trouble. The thing that always tipped me off that things were getting worse was that my father's face would get red with anger and he bared his teeth while clenching and unclenching is hands.  He sort of reminds me now of a rabid dog, without the drool oozing from his mouth.  He was a fat man, always seemed to be greasy and just generally filthy.  We weren't like that, my sister, mother and I.  We were more normal and cleaner than he ever was.  I don't know if maybe that was something Mom did just to make some sort of separation between us and him.  She wouldn't leave him for some reason and when things got bad she refused to run away to a shelter or to go stay with my grandparents.

My earliest vivid memory of my past that I have now was when I was about four years old.  I came home from playing one day and I couldn't find my sister.  I saw Dad sitting at the kitchen table smoking while reading the paper and noticed that he seemed to be getting over some of his anger.  Immediately I thought that there had been another fight and I hoped that Jenny hadn't been hurt. I went to the closet and opened it, and I found her sitting all curled up in the corner, but she didn't want to come out, so I left her there to find my mom.  I was always worried about my mom too.  She was so much smaller compared to my father because of her height and also because of how skinny she was.  I was afraid that one day he would hit her too hard and would snap her in two.  After the fights I would always go to her and sit with her while she cried into a pillow.  She always tried to hold back her tears and I never understood why, but now I know it was because she wanted me to think that everything was all right.  But I guess I was a little too smart for my age, or maybe I was forced to grow up a little faster because of the fear.  I took notice of everything and I saw through my mom's façade and knew that she wasn't okay when she pretended that she was.  I would always do my best to cheer her up and I always gave her a lot of kisses and hugs to show her that I cared about her and that at least someone loved her.  I guess I was pretty much a mama's boy.  But there was something underneath her surface that was off.  She would get more and more distant from me with every fight she had with him and sometimes no amount of kisses would make her smile.  

That night, I walked into my parent's bedroom and I found her sitting on the bed in front of the dresser mirror, nursing a large lump on her head and a cut on her cheek.  She looked at me when I walked in, but other than that, didn't acknowledge me.  She was more distant than ever and she was strangely calm.  There were no tears, not even a sniffle.  She seemed intent on doing something, but I didn't know what.  Her change in demeanor scared me and I was suddenly afraid that she would run away or leave me somehow.  I jumped up on the bed and said "I love you, Mommy" and squeezed her.  

She winced and said in a lifeless tone, "Stop it, Mommy's stomach hurts."  

I whispered that I was sorry and leaned against her while she washed the blood off her face with a rag and put a bandage on her cut.  

Mom was such a sweet person and earlier in my life she was happier than she was after that last fight.  She would do anything for anyone and was an all around good person.  We may not have been the wealthiest family in the world, we weren't even middle class, but that didn't mean we weren't good people.  Even my father had been nice at one time, but he had slowly gotten into drinking and it had consumed him.  I was too young to really understand anything, but I could see that my mother wasn't as happy as she used to be and she lost some of her vibrant personality.  She always made Jenny and I up though, so we would be dressed up even when we went to the grocery store.  She always kept my hair short and combed it nicely every day for me.  I used to almost fall asleep while she brushed my hair because she was so gentle while doing it and it relaxed me.  She wanted us to have some refinement in our lives even when we lived in the dumps.  I guess now that I remember her, she seems to have come from a higher class than what we were.  

Anyway, after she was done with mending herself, she got up and walked out of the bedroom and down the hall to get her car keys.  "I'm going out," she said without feeling to my father.  He just grunted in reply and didn't even look up from the paper.

"Mommy!  Wait!  I want to go with you!" I cried.  That fear of her leaving me came over me again and I refused to let her go.  

She stopped in her tracks and turned to look at me.  I could see that she was debating whether or not to take me with her.

"Shut the fuck up and go to your room," my father shouted at me.

That was the last straw and it made me burst into tears.  I didn't want to go to my room, I wanted to be with my mom!  That did it for her too, because she came and picked me up and carried me out to the car to take me along.

The ride in the car was quiet and Mom didn't really seem to notice me at all.  I found myself staring at her while she drove.  She had her elbow resting on the car door and was driving with only one hand.  She had put glasses on to cover the bruises by her eyes and to try to mask the tears that were steadily flowing down now.  We went to a whole bunch of different stores and looked around.  I only vaguely remember that a few people stared at Mom while we passed them and I wondered why they were.  It never occurred to me that our life wasn't normal and that not everyone's mom gets beaten up.  

During the ride home, I suddenly remembered that I had left Jenny at home all by herself and I began to worry that maybe she had gotten hurt too.

"Mommy, we forgot Jenny."  My voice cracked as I started to really worry about my sister and the fact that she could be squished like a bug by my father.  She would never be able to put up a good fight against him especially if my mother couldn't.

She looked over at me and caressed my face and said, "She'll be okay, Bobby, he wouldn't dare to hit her."  Mom wasn't completely sure of what she told me and I saw it on her face.  Her eyebrows knitted together over her glasses after she said it.  

When we got home, I ran to the closet and opened it up to find Jenny still sitting in the corner, still unhurt.  Mom came up behind me and coaxed Jenny out of her hiding place.  She carried Jenny back to our room and she put us to bed and read us a story since it was past our bedtime and she wanted us asleep.  In fact, now that I remember, she read us story after story and I assume that it was because she didn't want to go back and deal with our father again.  Finally after a while, the door to their room burst open and my father came out and demanded that my mother go to bed.

"Now come on.  You know what you have to do to apologize, bitch." 

Jenny sank down and pulled the covers up over her nose, but couldn't bring herself to cover her eyes.  I sat up and watched as my mom slowly got up and followed my father back into their room and shut the door behind her.  I heard a slap and later a lot of moaning.  I didn't know at the time what Mom had had to do and I'm disgusted now to think that my father thought that she was the one who needed to apologize.  At the time I thought that he was beating her again and I became determined to stop it.  

I jumped out of the bed after I had been listening to the moaning for maybe fifteen minutes and proceeded to go and save my mom.

"Bobby!  No!  You'll get hurt!"  Jenny whispered from the bed.  

I didn't pay attention to her and instead walked across the hall to my parents' bedroom door.  I pressed my ear against the door, giving my dad one last chance to stop hurting my mom before I tried to intervene, but I still heard the moans, so I went in.  He was on top of her and her hands were gripping the pillows and she was moaning and her face was twisted.  I was scared for her and yelled, "Stop it!  You're hurting her!"  I jumped on the bed and tried my best to punch my dad and make him stop.  He only laughed at me and pushed my roughly off the bed.

"Stop," my mom said.  Then gently to me she said, "Come here, Bobby."

Father stopped moving around on top of her and I cautiously walked to her side.  She twisted around the best she could with him still on top of her and she smiled at me and touched my cheek.  "Everything is okay, Bobby.  You can go to bed.  Mommy loves you very much.  Tell your sister I love her too.  Goodnight, honey, go to bed."

I was reluctant to leave her there when I was so sure that he had been trying to kill her moments before, but her smile reassured me and I walked backwards towards the door and slowly closed it behind me.  I walked back to my bed and listened to the silence in the house for a while before I let myself go to sleep.

Now for my second earliest vivid memory…it was the next day when I woke up.  I was tucked in more tightly than I had remembered.  Jenny was huddled up on my one side and my favorite stuffed animal, my stuffed dog named Mr. Fluffles, had been placed beside me on the other.  I got out of the bed I shared with Jenny and walked to the mirror on Jenny's little dressing table and started to brush my hair.  Then I saw a pair of lips on my forehead made from my mom's red lipstick.  I wrinkled my eyebrows in wonder at why she would do that and just leave it there.  Usually when she gave me kisses when she had her makeup on, she would rub the lipstick off for me.  I walked back to the bed, not bothering to rub it off and saw that Jenny also had a pair of lips on her cheek.  I sat on the bed and played with Mr. Fluffles for a while, waiting until my mom came to say good morning like she did every morning.  I waited for a while, but I got bored and so I went in search of her.  

The house was unusually quiet and I was wondering why Mom wasn't cooking pancakes or eggs for us like she usually did.  I headed to the kitchen and found two plates of food on the table.  She had made eggs, pancakes, and sausages for us that morning, a combination that she rarely made because she complained it took her too much time.  I started to eat, but I got thirsty and called for Mom to get me a glass of orange juice, but she didn't answer.  I got up and got the carton out myself and pulled a chair up so that I could climb up to get a glass.  Once I had grabbed one, I stood on the chair and waited for Mom to come and yell at me like she always did when I climbed on chairs.  "You could fall down and crack your head open!" she would say.  "What would I ever do without you if that happened?"  Then she would hug me and lift me off the chair and would set me back on the floor with a smile when I apologized.  I waited for her to do that, but she never came.  I shrugged and climbed back down with the glass in my teeth so I could be extra careful, just for Mom.  I poured out the orange juice and managed to get some into the glass while I poured most of it on the floor.  

"Mommy!  I got the orange juice myself, but I spilleded it!" 

I expected her to scold me, but it never came.  I started getting worried again about her leaving me and I became desperate to find her.  "Mommy!"  I called as I ran through the house looking for her.  Finally I came to their bedroom door and saw that it was closed.  Jenny came out from our room rubbing her eyes and yawning.  She had Kara, her white stuffed cat hanging in one of her hands.  

"Mommy made us some food.  I guess she went out and left it for us," I said to her.  Jenny nodded and shuffled to the kitchen and sat down to eat.  

I stood in front of my parents' door looking at it.  All I wanted to do was to open it and check to see if maybe Mom had been tired and went back to sleep after making us some breakfast.  But there was something holding me back and I just wanted to believe that Mom had gone out to the store and would be back soon.  Curiosity got the better of me though and I opened the door and went in.  I was overjoyed to see my mom lying on the bed.  I climbed up on the bed beside and her and just looked at her for a minute in shock.  She was dressed in her best dress, one I had never seen her wear anywhere.  It was a white silk spaghetti-strapped evening gown with a layer on it that shimmered as the sun coming in from the window hit it.  She had her face all made up and the red lipstick was on her lips and I touched my forehead when I saw it.  Her black hair was done beautifully and it was swept up and curled.  I had never seen her looking so beautiful in all my life.  I thought that she had become an angel right before my eyes.   

"Mommy, you look so pretty!"  I said to her.  I shook her and tried to wake her up to tell her when she didn't answer me, but when I touched her shoulders, they felt cold.  Now that I thought about it, her normally porcelain looking skin had a blue tint to it.  I didn't know what to think and it was strange to me.  I thought that maybe it was more make up or something and it made me so nervous to feel her so cold that I shook her even more.  I panicked and cried and shook her harder.  I wanted my dad then, so that he could start an argument with her so she would wake up and argue back, but I knew he was at work and wouldn't be home until later in the day when my favorite TV show came on.  

Jenny appeared in the doorway and asked me why I was crying.  She walked up and climbed onto the bed beside me and looked at our mom in wonder at how beautiful she looked.  I lay down on the bed beside Mom and I wrapped her arm around myself while I curled into a ball against her like I always did when I was scared.  

"What are these?" Jenny asked me as she held up some little plastic bottles.  There were about five of them there and they were all empty.  Then she reached over and held up an envelope.

"I don't know," I replied.  "I don't care either."

I knew something was horribly wrong with my mom but I had no idea what death was.  I just thought that maybe she was sleeping too long and that was what I thought was wrong.  So I tried to shrug it off and took the envelope with me and left Mom while Jenny and I played in our room.  I checked on Mom every once in a while until finally Dad came home from work.  

"Where's my food, Natalie?" he roared.

I ran out of my room and hugged his leg.  

"Get off of me, Bobby," he said.

"But Daddy, Mommy isn't waking up…"

He had been trying to push me off of his leg, but when he heard me say those words, he froze and slowly looked over at me.

"What?" he asked quietly.

"She isn't waking up.  She made me breakfast though, but she hasn't waked up since I waked up."  

Dad tried more gently to push me off and I allowed him to and followed him as he walked to their room.  He pushed open the door and gasped when he saw Mom's beauty.  It was about noon then and the sun came pouring through the skylight overhead directly on the bed and directly on my mom.  She looked more radiant than when I had last seen her.  I thought for sure that she would wake up now with the sun in her eyes like that, but she still had her eyes closed and she didn't wake up.  

I think that my mom did all that for a reason.  She dressed up like that before she died so she could show my dad what he could have had all those years that he had abused her.  I'm almost sure now that my mom must have been at least middle class.  Her parents were always dressed up when they came to visit and I wondered why they looked at my dad like he was an icky slug when they shook his sweaty hands.  If she didn't come from a richer background, I don't know how my father would ever have been able to afford to buy a dress like that for her.  He was always drinking and spent the money on booze.  He barely made money anyway.  Mom must have saved that dress from a long time ago when she had gone to her prom or even from when she was married.  I wonder what would have driven her to marry my dad and sink so low to the bottom of the social and economic scale.  Remembering her now in that dress…it just makes me think that she deserved a lot better and she had never deserved to be beaten the way she was.  Why would she leave a life where she could afford a dress like that and marry a man who hit her and made her life hell?  Could it be that maybe she had been in love once with him and there was a time when he had always been completely sober?  Was it something like a rich girl falling in love with a noble poor boy and she leaves her wealth and luxury to be with the man she loves?  Maybe she had been in love with him at one time, but why did she decide to stay with him for so long?  She could have left and taken us to live with her parents.

Dad stood as if in a trance and stared at my mom for what seemed to me to be forever.  He finally sighed and left the room dejectedly.  I ran to my room and grabbed the envelope and handed it to him while he sat on the couch and rested his face in his hands.

"Daddy," I said while shaking him.  "Mommy left this on the bed."  He looked up and took it from me.  Jenny came up beside me and we watched as he read the letter silently to himself.  I could see that he was holding back his tears.  When he had finished reading, he said, "She told me to tell you that she loves you."  He got up then and went to the bathroom and didn't come out all night and went to sleep finally on the couch around midnight.    


	2. Chapter 2

Hey guys!  Thank you for the reviews to the ones who left them!  Okay, in this chapter, he talks about how he and 18 joined a gang.  I'm warning everyone now that I know nothing about how gangs operate, so don't get picky about particulars.  I only added it in because under 17's bio in Beckett Magazine, it said that he was the leader of a biker gang.  I'm not getting to that part yet, that is in the next chapter, but I'm putting in this chapter how he got into that.  So anyway, I just wanted to tie that in, don't yell at me if you are in a gang and you know first hand that this or that happens and I don't write it write.  Let's all pretend that the gang he was in operated this way, 'kay?  Sorry if I sound snippy, I'm not!  ^_^  I'm just trying to stop any attacks on particulars my writing in advance, because those don't matter to me and most likely I won't change them, hehe.  

Enjoy!

~Lady Branwen~

[Disclaimer (This goes for the last chapter too): I don't own DBZ or Beckett Magazine]

The Story of My Life

Chapter 2

My father went in his room and barely came out at all during the day, other than for going to work.  In fact it seemed like he never came out.  He did though, but he wasn't the same.  I remember I was slightly taken aback that he didn't yell at Mom anymore and didn't even yell at us for weeks after I had found her dead.  Even when people had come to the house to make funeral arrangements with him, it never occurred to me that my mom was gone.  I still believed that she had gone to sleep and was taking a lot longer than usual to wake.  I know that seems so far fetched, but I was only four and still slightly naïve, even with my maturity and being able to see past things.  Maybe I even just blocked out the knowledge that I knew my mom was dead and I was reduced to be the naïve child that I really was at that age.  It wasn't until the actual funeral that I began to believe that maybe she wasn't going to come back.

Dad told the people who were going to make her up and make her presentable to be shown at the funeral that Mom had requested to be left with the make up she had put on herself and that they would have to work around it or at least replicate it again.  At the funeral, Dad lifted me up so that I could see Mom and said, "Here, Bobby, say your last words to her."  His voice cracked and his breathing became ragged.  

I turned and looked at him with all the innocence that a child can have when they don't understand that someone is dead.  "Why?  Is Mommy going somewhere?"

"Yeah," he answered softly as he looked at her, "and she's not coming back."

I studied him then.  He was dressed up in a black suit and was entirely clean, no sign of grease or filth anywhere.  He didn't have alcohol on his breath either.  To me, he looked like someone important that had appeared out of no where to take notice of my mother at her funeral.  I looked back at my mother, still in her evening gown and still appearing to be an angel now in my eyes.  I kept expecting wings to sprout out of her back and hoped that she would wake up and fly away with Jenny and I in her arms.  The morticians had done a good job, at least to my child-like senses, that I thought that she was still alive.  The bluish tint was gone, at least.  I thought that my parents, had they always dressed up like this, would have looked rich.  I saw what my life might have been had my father not gotten himself so deep in his drunkenness.  

"Did Mommy get mad at you?  Is that why she's leaving?"

His lips were pressed together in an attempt to keep back his sobs and he only nodded in reply.

"I don't want her to go, Daddy," I cried. I looked at her suddenly and expected her to disappear before my very eyes and leave me behind without her.  I was desperate to have her hold me again.  "I want to go with her!"  I wanted her to do what she had done before and pick me up and take me with her to the stores and we would come home.  She would read my stories again and she would stay there with us forever.  I grabbed the edge of her coffin and attempted to climb in, but my dad easily pulled me away and set me on the ground.  Jenny looked at me with pity when I started crying just before Dad lifted her up to say goodbye too.  

I remember looking up at the coffin and thinking that I would never be able to reach it, I would never be able to climb up that high to be with my mom again.  Not even her parents were there and I felt like I was the only one who truly knew her and loved her.  I would always hang around my mom and we would shower each other with affection.  It struck me as odd that everyone Mom or my father had ever known had shown up except for my grandparents.  What I didn't know, but that I later found out, was that they had died in a car accident.

After the funeral and in the following weeks, I slowly began to realize that Mom would never come back.  I don't remember anything in detail after that.  All I know is that my dad went back to drinking and would yell at us a lot, but would hit us less than he had hit Mom.  At some point I wondered why Mom had left us all alone with him.  I resented her leaving, but as I matured I realized what she had gone through and she had sacrificed herself many times for Jenny and me.  She had kept him away from us and had taken many hits that could easily have been aimed at us if she hadn't taken them.  Even though things weren't as bad as they were with Mom, we still got hit after she died.  Anytime I could I would attempt to protect Jenny and would let myself be hit instead of her.

The years passed and I would wish that Dad would die and leave my sister and I alone and that Mom would come back.  But instead of dying, he kept on living and the daily abuse kept going on. That is, until we were 12. 

He went out to work one day and never came home.  Instead, a policeman came to the door and asked to see the adult in the house.  I became uneasy because there was no one else there other than Jenny.  My father had left us at home all day while he was at work after Mom died and didn't bother to find us a babysitter.  The only thing he did was to enroll us at school and threaten us to get up to go.  We would have to get up on our own and walk the entire long walk to school, even through the bad sections of the neighborhood.  He always left us home alone and warned us never to open the door for anyone.  He said that if people found us home by ourselves, he could be arrested and we would be taken away.  Strangely, that scared us.  We, at least I, wanted him to die and leave us alone, but when he said things like that, it scared us and we didn't want him to be taken away from us or to be taken from him. Now I had disobeyed Dad and the door had opened for the cop who very well might have been there to take us away.

"No one's here.  I'm in charge," I answered.  Jenny walked up behind me and looked up at the policeman with a slight hint of fear gracing her features.

He looked at me incredulously and thrust his head around the doorframe to take a look around inside.  Jenny always did her best to keep it clean to give Dad one less thing to yell about when he got home.  So now that the policeman looked at it, the house worked to our advantage and made it look like nothing was wrong with our lives.

"Will anyone be coming home?"

"No," I answered strongly and a bit coldly.  I guess even back then I had been distant from others and cold towards them.  "We live with my dad."

When he shifted uncomfortably, I knew something was wrong.  "Can I come in?" he asked hesitantly.

"I'm not supposed to open the door for strangers; I only did because you are a policeman."

He sighed and got down on one knee and shattered our lives forever.  That man could not possibly have known what he did to us, because I think that day was the start of it all, what eventually led to us becoming androids.  "Your father is dead," he said.  "He died in a car accident."

Hearing that changed our lives forever.  Our life may not have been the best, and our father may not have ever won the best father of the year award, but it was our life, our home, what we knew, and the way we knew how to live.  That was what we faced everyday and in a sense we found comfort in the routine, going through the paces of our day.  To many people that probably sounds strange.  We didn't want to leave the only family we had left, but instead he was wrenched away from us and that policeman had been the bearer of bad news.  

Pockets of my memory are gone.  Usually people may not remember every detail from their lives, but they have a sense of how they felt or what happened to them in a particular period of their life, like a generalization.  Androids, we remember everything since we were activated.  I can go on for days about the very first day I was ever activated as an android and how I had taken in everything and tell about all the things that happened after that point in time in detail.  My memory logs record everything and it's all stored away for future reference.  But I have lost a lot of my past.  I'm pretty sure that that is thanks to Dr. Gero tampering with my mind.  He had tried his best to make us unfeeling and made 18 and I forget our past so that we would have no qualms about taking life.  Needless to say, trying to get rid of feelings didn't work.  I still had a connection to my sister and could feel fear, hate, ndifference and the one that most people know about me is my ego.  I'll get to that later though.

Eventually somehow we managed to run away.  When we did, I took my mom's suicide note with me.  I could finally read it after all those years that I hadn't been able to read, plus the fact that Dad had locked it away to where I couldn't get it.  I read it often when I finally got my hands on it.  Jenny and I refused to be separated and we didn't think that anything could be worse than what we had already been through, but we were wrong.   

We had no other family to run to and we didn't have money to use to get to them even if we did.  So, we were forced to live on the streets.  Well, I don't know if I can say with absolute truth that we were _forced to.  We had the option of going with social services and being adopted.  But we were smart enough to know that that doesn't work out.  There was too much of a chance that we would be separated and there would be the chance that we wouldn't see each other again.  So, since we were twins and we didn't want to be separated, we ran away and became street kids.  I remember hating that kind of life at first and wished that Dad were still alive so that at least we could have a roof over our heads.  We were constantly moving around because the police kept finding us in the abandoned buildings that we slept in.  Actually, they never found us, because we would always run away from them and find another place to stay before they found us, but there were some close calls though.  _

It's funny how no one wants homeless people to sleep on a park bench in front of them or seek shelter in an old building that no one uses anymore when that homeless person can't find anywhere else to sleep.  It's not like they wanted to lose their dignity as individuals and be homeless, but it happens.  No one wants homeless people around and yet they won't lift a finger to help out.  We were reduced to begging strangers for money.  No one knows what an indignity that is until they experience it for themselves, I think.  I remember how degraded I felt and the feeling of worthlessness and helplessness that enveloped me whenever I had to beg for food or dig through people's trash to find some.  When homeless people ask for money, they need it, obviously.  Sure, some use it to go drink alcohol, but hey, that's their choice.  But not giving anything or giving children the bare minimum change in your pocket is downright cruel.  When people in suits walk by you and you know they have money and they choose to only give you a quarter, it really makes you think.  And makes you angry.  But hey, their defense is "Beggars can't be choosers!"  I guess that's true but a quarter instead of at least ten bucks, just enough for a meal for two, is in my opinion wrong.

Jenny and I barely made it through the next few years on our own, until we were spotted by a biker gang.  We were scared.  We had some vague idea how gangs operated, how ruthless and violent they were.  We wanted nothing to do with them, but then again, if we refused to join, they could kill us.  Surprisingly though, the leader was actually pretty nice.  His street name was Ratz (he was called that because of his love for rats), but his real name was Kyle and that's what we ended up calling him most of the time.  He had dark brown hair, and a big, bulgy nose due to the many times it had been broken in fights.  That day Kyle was wearing the gang colors, black and dark red in the form of his black jeans with a blood red t-shirt.  Before going to fight, he would wear brass knuckles and he had had them on when he found us.  Most of the time, what we saw him wearing was usually a black t-shirt with a long sleeve white shirt underneath and jeans.  He seemed powerful that day and looked like he could hurt us badly, but when he spoke, he was incredibly gentle and understanding.   

Kyle had found us huddled at the end of an alleyway next to a pair of garbage cans, just finishing a bag of stale chips someone had thrown away.  We had felt pretty lucky that cold day because a lady had actually _taken_ us to a fast food place to eat.  She had told us to eat anything and everything we wanted and she would pay for it.  I felt guilty about her kindness and I wanted to eat as little as possible so that she wouldn't waste her money on us.  But instead, hunger won out and we pigged out on the food because we had no idea when we would find food again or when we would get another chance to eat food like that.  The more we ate, the more the lady smiled.  She seemed to actually take a happiness in our well-being and I thought that the world needed more people like her.

Anyway, back to what I was talking about before…Kyle found us and offered us a place for us in the gang.  Jenny had moved closer to me as he approached and tried to hide behind me.  He talked to us for a while patiently as we begged him not to hurt us and he kept trying to reassure us that he wouldn't.  I slowly began to see that he really wanted to help us, not necessarily enlist us.  I think we reminded him of himself at our age, because I later found out that he had been orphaned too when he was a kid.  After a while, he convinced me to join.  Jenny wasn't too thrilled with the idea.  I think she only joined too because she didn't want to be left behind and that the whole reason that we were out in the cold lonely streets instead of a warm house was because we wanted to stick together above all else.  The good thing, though, was that we didn't have to go through an initiation.  

All the time that we stayed with him, we looked up to him as a big brother. He let us stay in the building the gang kept as their own.  It was far away from the city, but at least the cops didn't know about them being there.  We stayed there while they went and caused trouble and all that stuff.  A few of the members were angry that we were let in and we didn't even do anything.  They were afraid that we would go tell the police, but they were only idiots.  I mean, we had a roof over our head and we got food.  After all our troubles living on our own, why would we give something like that up?

I remember that I felt like I was at home there.  The gang became my family, though not as close to me as Jenny was.  When he had time, Kyle would stay and talk with us and entertain us for a little while.  He was a muscular guy and we always felt protected around him.  There were a lot of things to be afraid of for us at the time.  I don't quite remember what they were, but I know one of them had to be fear of the other gang members.  Jenny always used to cuddle up against him and he took to the role as big brother fairly quickly.  Kyle seemed to feel a little awkward at first, but after that, he enjoyed protecting us, it seemed, and he would always give us advice on different things.  His deep voice always used to put me to sleep.  

He had a whole bunch of pet rats that he would bring out and let us play with.  Well, he let us play with them, but only I did.  Jenny was scared to death of their eyes and she was always afraid they would nibble her to death or give her rabies.  Kyle would always tease her and put one on her head or put one close to her face and she would squeal and try to bat it away.  She always got mad at me when I laughed at her and did the same thing.  

Anyway, life went on like that for about two years before I started getting bored of just sitting in the building all day.  It was then that I decided that I wanted to join the gang, really join it.  I wanted to go out and do something, even if it was causing trouble.  There was nothing for me to do and I couldn't possibly talk to Jenny all day.  There were only so many new things I could talk about my day that Jenny didn't already know about.  She thought I was completely crazy when I told her about my plans.  

"What is your problem?  We have it good here.  You know that they are violent, don't you?  You could get killed.  All we have to do is sit here all day and not even have to kill anyone.  Why do you want to go looking for that?"

Nothing she said convinced me that I should stay.  I knew that I was taking a big chance with my life and that if I died, she would have no one left.  And if anyone in the gang wanted to rape her or make her the gang slut, I wouldn't be there to protect her.  It was unbelievably selfish, but that just shows you how bored I was.  I needed to get out and do something.  


	3. Chapter 3

[Disclaimer:  I own nothing!!]

The Story of My Life

Chapter 3

Kyle let me in the gang, and this time I went through an initiation. I had to rob a store at night and get away with it. He was very lenient with my initiation, actually.  Some of the other guys were upset because they had had to rape a girl or beat someone up and I got away with being a burglar.   He didn't care, though, and neither did I.  I robbed a department store by breaking the glass doors and running around like a madman.  I was scared to death of getting caught. I saw the security cams all over the place and I kept thinking that I heard footsteps.  So I ran all over the store, gathering all the clothes that I could and rushed out.  I heard sirens wailing in the distance and I was almost sure that I was caught.  I expected Kyle and the rest of the guys to leave me there at the first sign of the police and that I would be left running towards the hideout all the way from town.  But they were there, ready to go.  I hopped on Kyle's bike and we sped off.  I removed the ski mask I had been wearing and looked back, expecting the police to be in hot pursuit, but they weren't there.  I laughed at the fact that I had gotten away with it and I was actually pretty happy about the whole event.

When we got back, I handed Jenny all the clothes that I had taken.  They were all for her.  I had even snagged a party dress for her incase she ever decided to go to an underground club with one of the guys.  She was impressed with my haul and I think that was about the time she started getting crazed about shopping.  Whenever we made some money and I got my share, I would split it with her and she would make me take her shopping for clothes and make up and all that kind of stuff.  

I learned the ropes of the gang pretty quick and I became very good at handling different situations.  I even surpassed some of the guys that had been in the gang for five years since the time it was formed.  Kyle showed me everything he could about running it and all the tricks for escaping the cops.  I kind of thought that he was training me to become the next leader.  That was exactly it.  Another two years after I joined, he held a gathering and told everyone that if something happened to him, that I would become their leader.  Oh, no one has any idea what I went through after that.  The guys who had been resentful before, absolutely hated me now.  Whenever I was put in charge of doing something, like leading a robbery, one of then would mess up on purpose and would almost get us caught.  Then when we got back and had to report to Kyle, I would be beaten because I couldn't keep my people in check.   One time, I don't even remember what I was in charge of, but he messed it up so badly that we actually did get caught and spent time in jail.  When we got out again, I was beaten to within an inch of my life and I was out of the gang until I recuperated.  Jenny took care of me then and helped me around.  I remember that they broke my knee and after that, it would always hurt every once in a while.  

The guy who always messed things up for me was Dan.  I hated him.  He looked like a weasel to me and he acted like one too.  He had squinty eyes, a raspy voice and bulgy eyes and was incredibly skinny for being in a gang.  He looked like some homicidal maniac from a horror movie.  All he really had was the ability to intimidate and scare.  But he also had his hidden qualities too.  He was actually pretty smart.  I guess, talking about being a particular kind of villain in a movie, one would see him as the sidekick to a villain who was untrustworthy to any side, and was in some measures, smarter than the villain himself.  And far more sneaky.  That describes Dan perfectly.  He was always suspicious of everyone, especially me, and especially after I really joined the gang.

Then one day, the unthinkable happened and Kyle was shot to death by a rival gang.  He had been out alone with his girlfriend, Elaine, and they found him and overpowered him.  We found Kyle outside our door the next day with his head on a stick coming up from the ground.  Jenny had been the one to find him and she ran back inside screaming and crying.  No one could figure out what was bothering her, some even thought that she had lost her mind.  She was trying to tell us, but when she tried to describe what she had seen, she started throwing up.  Alan, a newbie went to the door to see what she had seen and he came back yelling too.  He told us about Kyle and we all went outside and buried him.  And that's when I became their leader.  I was the one in charge and if anyone bungled anything then, I could be the one to beat them and no one could beat me.  I went out and bought my first gun that day and I always kept it beside me and slept with it under my pillow at night.  Just because I was their new leader, didn't mean that all the guys who had hated me before would love me and be loyal to me now.

I remember that I didn't think it was a good idea to have everyone in one place, so everyone had to find their own place to stay.  Whether they had to go back to living with their parents or not, I made them leave.  The hideout was still our meeting place and where we would go back to when we needed to hide, but no one lived there anymore, and so there was less chance of being caught all together.  For the three out of the eight in the gang that had been orphans, I bought them each a trailer to live in with the money that we had saved up, with still more than enough left for weapons and other things that we might need.  I got my own little house in a bad neighborhood.  It was falling apart and it needed some fixing up, but I bought it anyway and Jenny and I moved in.  

I became more thoughtful and concerned during the time that I was the leader.  I thought a lot about my mom at that time and I wondered how for being so gentle and caring she had ended up with such a brute and callous man like my father.  I read and reread her suicide note daily as if it were a holy scripture that I had to recite.  Addressed to my father, it read: 

_Roy__, _

_It's been unbearable living with you.  I think you know that.  I don't know if you intended for life to be this way for us or not, but I sure as hell don't want to be here with you anymore.  I have no where else to go but home, home to the sky and the stars.  There is no way that I can describe how you have hurt me and have driven me to this point.  After all that we have gone through, places we have been and where we came from, even after finding ourselves in the slums, how could this happen?  It began so gradually and you used to apologize and I believed you.  But now, this road has been too long and I don't want you anymore.  I have been patient and have endured your drinking and your harsh words, but I just can't anymore.  It tears me up inside because I remember how we used to be, how happy we were.  Don't you remember when Bobby and Jenny were born and how you took time off of your job so we could both be with them? We used to live such a happy life and we were in a good neighborhood and everything.  I don't know what could have driven you to drink, but I hope it wasn't me.  So far as I know, I haven't ever done anything to hurt you or to turn you away.  I've always tried to be a good wife through thick and thin, but you haven't returned it to me._

_I want you to be a better father from now on than what you have been recently.  I don't want to leave my children and I'm being selfish for barely thinking about how they will feel and react to this, but I just can't take life with you anymore.  I hope my death teaches you something about how to treat women or maybe it will trigger what used to be in your heart.  You remember how we used to go out dancing and went to parties, don't you?  How much fun we had and how happy we were together?  Perhaps now you'll see how far you can push people by drinking and maybe now you'll stop.  For Bobby and Jenny's sake, I hope you do stop.  The one thing I want to come out of my death is for you to change, to become the man that I married again._

_Tell Bobby and Jenny that I love them very much and that I want them to be good for you. Tell them that I'll always be with them and even if I'm not physically there, my love and spirit will follow them through life and I'll been in their hearts.  Make sure that you tell Bobby this because he'll be the one to be most shattered by my death._

_And believe it or not, __Roy__, I still love you, but not the man that you have become.  The man that is still inside of you, drowned in the alcohol._

_Goodbye,_

_Natalie   _

At one of our meetings Cale, another newbie, suggested that we should get jobs since the gang hadn't been making a lot of money, even when Kyle was still around.  We would have to give some of the money from our paychecks to the gang, that way we could build up our cash again.  Mostly everyone was for it and so that's what we did.  I became a bag boy at one of the local grocery stores where Jenny also worked as a cashier.  She was freaked out that I would take her money too to donate to the gang, but I assured her that she could keep her money.  It seems strange to me now how I used to live.  I was almost like a comic book hero gone wrong: bag boy by day, gangster by night.  It was full of stress, that job.  No one would think so.  I mean, how hard is it putting things in bags and then putting them in a cart?  Very hard, actually.  There are those who make it easy on you and don't care how you put the stuff inside.  Then there are the really picky ones who want things put together perfectly.  The refrigerated things must be together in one bag, things that go in their cupboards in another, then the things that you leave out of the fridge or cupboards in another.  Again, something deceptively easy that just quite isn't.  Why?  Because some people put their fruit in the refrigerator and some don't.  Because some strange people put their noodles in one cupboard and their cereal in another and want the bags to be separated by cupboards.  Then, you get the ones who want their bags color coded.  Makes me stressed out just thinking about all of that.  So, by the end of the day, I was completely stressed out and I was slowly getting sick of the gang…and life.  

Then one day I met Rachel.  She was a beautiful woman.  She was 18 and I was 16.  She was my first for everything.  I had raped a few girls before, but I had never taken any pleasure in it.  Rachel was my first girlfriend, she gave me my first real kiss, and was my first real sex partner.  I loved her.  She became my girlfriend and we stayed together through thick and thin.  I made sure that I kept her out of the gang, even though she had even asked me to let her in.  She was very interested in what we did, but I knew that she had led a sheltered life before and would never make it on her own.  The gang was no place for her.  I could see Rachel actually making something of herself, like being a vet like she wanted to be.  The least she could do was be a receptionist or something.  She was classy and I'm sure that anyone would have hired her.  She could be so nice when she wanted to be.  And she also had a fiery attitude so that when she was doing business, you knew she wasn't joking around.  She had dark red hair, it must have been dyed, but I never saw her dye it, deep green eyes, and porcelain white skin.  She was a goddess in my eyes.  I doted on her and bought her a lot of things, and in return, she let me live with her.  

Slowly, I started to lose interest in the gang and we started holding a lot less meetings.  Finally, one day Cale showed up at my door and told me that some of the guys were planning to take over the gang.  I wasn't surprised by that.  I think that maybe subconsciously I had been slacking on purpose to get out of it.  But what did surprise me was that Cale had shown up and told me.  He actually was loyal to me and trusted my judgment.  He was still young and impressionable, but I never had the heart to beat him.  He was just like a little four year old who always looked up to me like a big brother who would protect him.  I guess it made me feel like how Kyle must have felt about me.  I always wanted to protect Cale like he was my kid or something.  I kept him with me after that and he lived with us.  I let him go out and do what he wanted, but he always came back and we waited for the day that the rest of them would rise up against me.  

In the meantime, I had gotten Rachel pregnant.  Almost a year after I had met her, she came out of our bedroom one morning and didn't look too good. She was a little pale and when I put down a plate of pancakes I had made for her in front of her, she looked away and wouldn't even look at them.  

"What's wrong?" I asked.

She slowly looked at me and it seemed as if she were trying to dig deep into my mind and find out my reaction to what she was going to tell me.  "I'm pregnant."

I was in mute shock for a while.  I guess those things really don't always work.  But I didn't care.  I wanted to have a kid with her.  I had told her before that we couldn't have one and that I didn't want one, but as soon as she said it, I was happy.  It was only a little happiness at first, but then it spread until I was consumed by it.  I knew that the baby would be beautiful if it looked anything like Rachel and I couldn't wait to go and buy things for it and play with it when I got home from work.  Rachel was overjoyed when I told her how happy I was and we celebrated all that day.  I even called off of work and took her to a fancy restaurant to eat for dinner with money I had saved up for my own savings.  

But all that was ruined when we got home.  Our house was completely wrecked and I was reminded of why I hadn't wanted a kid in the first place.  I could be killed any day and my child wouldn't grow up with me in its life.  It would constantly be in danger too.  We moved out and bought a new place to live.  I left a note for Cale to let him know that we had moved, but I didn't tell him where we had gone.  I didn't want to risk anything.  I knew that I was losing my honor by running from them and just giving them more ammunition to get rid of me as their leader, but I didn't care.  I wanted to just stay with Rachel and the baby and forget how my life had been before them.  

Jenny came with us and we had to quit our jobs at the store.  We both searched all over the place for new jobs, but no one would hire either one of us.  Rachel still went to school to be a vet, and would let us have some of the money her parents sent her for her schooling.  I hated the fact that she did that.  I wanted her to be able to have money and live in a nicer house than the one we now lived in.  I wanted to find a job as soon as possible so that I could give her back the money she had let Jenny and I have so that she could continue going to school.  One day, Jenny came home holding an ad.  She sat in a chair for over an hour mulling it over before she came to me and asked me if I wanted to do it.  It was asking for a pair of twins that wouldn't mind being tested for medical research and given drugs that would enhance strength and mobility, blahblahblah.  I didn't mind it.  It said that we would be paid $100 for every hour we spent there.  It seemed like a good deal, but in the back of my mind there was a little nagging voice that kept telling me that it wasn't a good idea and I shouldn't do it.  But I dismissed that voice and decided to do it anyway, with the excuse that with that extra strength I would be able to defeat anyone who wanted to fight me, even the gang members.


	4. Chapter 4

Hello all!  I finally got around to getting this chapter out.  Sorry it took a while, but hey, it came out faster than the chapter for the other story!  Hehehe…anyway, this one isn't that exciting (at least not until the end) but does have a cliffhanger.  The next chapter should be more exciting.  Okay, that's about it from me.  Please read and review!  Thanks!

~Lady Branwen~

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Disclaimer: You know the drill, DBZ isn't mine!

The Story of My Life

Chapter 4

"So what do you think?" Jenny asked me on the drive to the lab.

"Of what?"

"I don't know, about this whole experiment thing.  To me, it's just like we're becoming guinea pigs. I don't like that thought too much."

"Yeah, but we'll get paid a ridiculous amount of money.  Maybe with that, depending on how long we decide to keep going with the testing, we can move to a better place.  I don't want my kid growing up the way we did.  They deserve a better start."

"That's true," she answered.  Then the rest of the drive was quiet.

I had my own reservations about the experimentation.  I had had a bad feeling about it ever since Jenny had shown me the ad.  It looked like it was too good to be true.  Nothing good happened to us.  Ever.  So why now did something promising arise?  Everything good I get comes with a price.  When the lady had fed us, that one time long ago, I felt guilty about it and kept feeling bad about it.  When we finally got a place to live with the gang, we weren't trusted and had to watch our back.  When I became the leader of the gang, it was at the cost of Kyle, probably my best friend.  So then, since I was going to get a baby and what seemed like a good opportunity to make some money, I felt that something bad would happen.  Perhaps the baby would be born, but Rachel would die.  I would be made stronger with the experimentation, but I would be grossly disfigured like a monster that everyone would run from and no one would trust.  I wanted more than anything at that time to be there for my child.  I didn't want things to be like how they had been with my father.  I wanted to be there for it, shower it with love and kindness.  I wanted to protect it and comfort it when it was scared, I didn't want to be the cause of its fear.  I didn't want it to grow up without a father because he was shot or beaten to death, bleeding in an alleyway with no one to care or to help.  These thoughts kept reverberating in my mind as I left.  

Before I had gone to the lab, I had said goodbye to Rachel at least a million times, and told her that I loved her a million times more.  I didn't want to leave her alone, afraid that someone from the gang might find out where we lived and she would be killed mercilessly.  The gang had often done that, we've killed a few people of a rival gang leader's family, even when I was in charge.  But I had made the gang more laid back.  We would mostly do harmless things like destroying bars, fist fighting with random people, stealing, stuff like that.  Rachel finally got sick of my millions of kisses and finally pushed me out the door with a smile. 

The lab.  That stupid shit of a place.  At that time, Dr. Gero worked in a lab in a city, not the hidden one that he used to make us androids.  That came later.  The one he worked at was full of people and assistants, and other doctors.  So far, as far as choosing the right pair of twins to test, they were still giving them all physicals to make sure they were in good health.  We had to undergo all of their tests and probing, which I remember I wasn't very fond of, but hey, we wanted that money.  When it was our turn to be checked up, Gero looked us over and smirked to himself.  We were found to be in perfect health, much to my surprise.  One would think that after living in such poor conditions we would have picked up some diseases along the way.  This wasn't the case though, and ultimately we were chosen for the experiments.

We sat on two long metal tables, both of us in hospital gowns when Dr. Gero came in to see us again.

"Now," he said, "I don't know how much you know about the procedures, but I'll tell you about it now.  We," he motioned to his assistants, "will be tampering with your bodies a bit.  We will give you different medicines, inject you with chemicals, and also, perhaps, other things with your permission."

"Like what?"  Jenny asked.

"We would implant metal into your bodies.  Bones can be easily broken, but with the metal in place of the bones, there is a far less chance of something like that happening.  I am trying to find out how far the body can go with that kind of procedure.  I am expecting that, along with the strength enhancement that you will get from the different chemicals, the metal would be an added benefit.  It would make you more stable, and you would have less chance of breaking bones at any given point in your life.  Even if you get hit by a bus.  That is for a different project; it has nothing to do with twins, but since we already know that you are healthy, you could also go into that experiment.  You would be given more money, of course."

Jenny looked uneasy.

"How do we know that our bodies won't reject the metal?  And what if it does break?  You would have to operate on us to fix it, it won't be able to heal on its own."

"Well, it is a new type of metal.  It is virtually indestructible.  So far, everything we have tried to destroy it, doesn't work, including large bombs on a test site.  The metal has already been used on battle tanks and planes.  I want to see what it can do with humans."

"You're saying that you want to create supersoldiers?"

 "In a way, I suppose that you could be used for that, but if I wanted to, I could create androids with the metal and they would be the supersoldiers.  There would not be emotions in the way like there would be with humans.  Experimenting with it on humans is just an experiment.  As for your body rejecting it, my plans are extensive.  You would be more metal than skin."

That really disgusted Jenny.  I didn't like the sound of being more metal than skin and bone, but I did like the part about being indestructible.  No one could kill me easily and I would be able to stay alive and take care of my kid.  

That day was the day that started all the rest on my becoming an android.  That day, I watched three different chemicals slowly drip into my body intravenously.  Jenny had to take one pill.  It made her shake for a while, but once the shakes were over, she told me that she felt stronger.  They tested her blood after that to see if it had any affect on her immune system or some crap like that, but they found that nothing was wrong with her.

We went home and went to bed as it was late at night.  Surprisingly, even though one of those chemicals, I was told, would give me strength, I felt drained.  I got into the bed next to Rachel and had a great fit of insomnia.  I just laid there in bed looking at the ceiling, then twisting around to watch Rachel sleep.  She was sleeping soundly with one arm draped around my waist.  She always looked so peaceful when she was asleep.  Whenever I watched like that, in the dead of night with nothing else to think about to keep my mind from wandering to things I didn't want to think about, I thought of my life.  I recalled everything that had happened to me.  The bad life, the hurts, the cold wind against my body from a lack of shelter, the condescending looks I would get on the streets from strangers who didn't even know me, the sight of my mother's lifeless body smiling at me.  All of those thoughts would come crashing down on me and I would look at Rachel and know that whatever paths I had taken had been the right ones.  Anything I went through was worth it if I had her in the end.  It must seem odd to whoever is reading this that I can remember all this, but I do.  Does anyone ever think I have feelings?  I do.  My sister does.  She came to tell me one day that an aircraft she was in almost crashed.  She had been with Vegeta's wife and some of the other people that her husband is friends with.  She saved everyone onboard.  She looked visibly awkward about that, showing feelings for others.  She said that she did it to save her child, but she must have also done it for the others.  Anyway, getting back to what I was talking about before, after a while, I fell asleep.

The next morning I woke up feeling like shit.  There's no other word for it.  I ached all over the place and my stomach felt like a washing machine …the water was going to spill out.

I jumped out of bed and ran to the bathroom to throw up, but lo and behold, Rachel was already there, in my way.  She had her head resting on the toilet and the contents of yesterday's dinner was in it.  I pushed her out of the way as quickly as I could and threw up whatever it was that I threw up.  I had not eaten anything since the day before yesterday since I was getting those chemicals put in.  They were supposed to be very strong and I wasn't supposed to have anything to eat when I took it.  So, I had no idea what the chunks were in the toilet, but they were there.  Rachel held my hair for me while I puked…and puked…and puked.  When I was finally done, I leaned back and sighed.  Rachel crawled across the floor over to me and rested her head on my shoulder.  It was kind of a touching moment, actually, if you really think about it.  I was sharing in her morning ritual of throwing up.  We were both miserable and shared that misery together.  Of course, she got over her morning sickness in a few hours, but I had it all day.  

Jenny and I left for the lab a few hours after Rachel went to school.  Jenny didn't seem to be having any of the problems that I had.  The only things that seemed to be different was that she was talking and moving faster than normal.    Her eyes darted all over the place and her hands could move faster than I could see.  When we got to the lab, they ran tests on her to check on the affects of the drugs.  It turned out that Jenny was supposed to be moving faster and whatever they gave her was working perfectly.  I, on the other hand, wasn't working out so well.  They gave me other chemicals to balance out whatever the last ones they gave me did and slowly my stomach started to feel better.

I had made my mind up and had decided that I would go through with the metal implants.  It would be a big step for me, I knew that then, but I was determined to be able to protect my child and my family.  Family…Rachel was everything to me.  I guess, even if we weren't actually married, I still thought of her as my wife.  I wanted to marry her.  I planned on asking her to marry me as soon as all the tests and surgeries were over and done with.  I could find another job to make some money and she would go to school and make some money too.  Then we would buy an even better house and live it and be happy for the rest of our lives.  Maybe we would hit rough spots, but we would be together and in a nice house, not on the streets where everything is worse.  

Again, all that day tests were run and I had small pieces of the metal replace the bones in a finger of my right hand.  It felt kind of weird, but it sort of worked, though not like my other fingers.  We went home and came back to the lab everyday and slowly my entire bone structure was being replaced with the metal.  All of that continued until one day I didn't wake up after the surgery.  By that time, my entire left leg and right arm had been metal.  I had gone into surgery to have implant put in my left arm, but I woke up from that a year later.

I woke up in a different lab.  The walls were made out of rocks, unlike the other lab I knew so well.  I noted to myself that I seemed to be in a cave, but I was confused about how I had gotten there.  I heard footsteps walking toward me.  When I tried to turn my head, I found that I couldn't move.  In fact, none of my body parts were able to move.  By then the footsteps had reached me and Dr. Gero suddenly appeared above me.

"You're awake."

I tried to answer, but I couldn't even open my mouth to speak.  I made a weird gurgling sound instead of any intelligible word.  He touched something in my neck and I found that I was able to move once he did so.   I sat up and looked around the room.  It seemed to be swirling around me, but I saw my sister clearly.  She was still asleep on a metal table.  There was a sheet covering her and for all I know, that was all she had on.  

"Hey, what is this?"  I asked when I turned to Gero.  "Why are we here?"

"My colleagues don't like how I'm going about my research.  I've decided to work on my own from now on.  Everything will take longer, but now there is less chance of anyone fucking up the experiment."

"I thought they were helping you…" I was getting very cautious.  I didn't like where all this was heading.  There was no one else in the lab, no one around to be witnesses to our transformation.  There was a nagging feeling inside of me that something wasn't going right.  I have heard of scientists having quarrels about their research, but nothing to the extent that they would give up altogether.  Usually they would try to prove each other wrong…so why weren't they?  Was there something going badly with the research?  Had Gero turned into a mad scientist?  All of his helpers had been with him in the beginning, making no objections to the experimenting that I knew of.  So it was odd to me that they had suddenly gone against him.

"They were.  But now they're not."

Now that I thought about it, Gero looked like a mad scientist.  His hair was all over the place and he looked like he hadn't had any sleep.  His lab coat was wrinkled and weird chemical stains were scattered all over the fabric.

"Where am I?  Man, I must have been really knocked out from that last surgery to not wake up while you took me here."

"You've been unconscious for over a year."

I stared at him blankly, shocked beyond thought.  A year?  My child must have been born…

"What?!"  I shrieked.  "A year?  How could you do this without telling me?!  My girlfriend was pregnant.  Do you know how mad she's going to be when I suddenly show up?  She wanted me to be there with her when she gave birth!  I don't even know what my kid looks like!"  I swung my legs over the side of the table and landed on the floor with a thud.  I found myself looking up at Gero from the floor while he looked down at me disdainfully.

"You're not going anywhere anytime soon.  You body has to become accustomed to use again.  It has to adjust to the metal."

I suddenly realized that I could feel more metal inside of me. 

"You're body is now forty percent metal."

My eyes grew wide in shock.  "What about my sister?  Why is she here?"

"She is thirty percent metal.  She decided to undergo the surgery the last time you remember having yours.  I have worked on you more."

"Is she going to wake up anytime soon?"

"Not for a while.  I have to finish putting some more metal in her.  Then I have to let you both become accustomed to your new bodies before I start again."

I sighed.  I didn't want to wait.  "Look, I know I agreed to this whole deal, but I didn't agree to being unconscious for more than a year.  I never said I wanted to miss out on my kid's birth.  Can you let me out of here so I can see my family?"

I tried getting up again and, after a little struggle, I finally got to my feet. 

"You're not strong enough."

"I thought you were supposed to give me stuff that would make me stronger," I mocked.  "Where the hell is that now?"

I unsteadily made my way to the door.  It was so obviously the way out; it was the only door in the room, other than one that led to an office.  It was made out of the same metal that was in my body and huge and thick, made to withstand any assault-or escape.  I banged my hand on the door in a vain attempt to get out.

"Even if you manage to get out of my lab, people will think you're drunk, you're so unsteady on your feet.  You will most likely be picked up by the police and won't even see your girlfriend anyway."  He said this in such a lifeless, cold tone.  He watched me carefully as I stalked back to the table to sit down.  I felt groggy.  He was probably right, I probably would not have made it very far.  "I suggest you begin by walking around the lab and getting used to the metal."

So that's what I did.  For a few weeks, I trained with small robots that would shoot out energy beams at me.  At first I was afraid of being burned or even killed, but once I did get hit, I found out that they couldn't harm me at all.  Now I realize that it was because Dr. Gero had done something to my skin to make it more resilient and also numb.  Since it wasn't connected to anything but metal, there was also no way for my bones or muscles to feel the pain.  I couldn't understand why had had me training so vigorously.  I mean, maybe for physical therapy, but the pace was just too fast most of the time.  Any, I soon became able to deflect the beams and caused a lot of trouble in the lab, but hey, it was fun!  I got better at using my body and finally one day Dr. Gero decided to let me out into the world.  By then, Jenny was up and operational as well.  Every minute we schemed ways to get out.  Everything was in vain and at that time we didn't know how to use energy yet.  So, one can imagine our excitement at being let out of the lab for the first time in a year and a half.  My mind was focused on finding my way back to the house, seeing Rachel and our child.  All I wanted was to see her face…hold our baby.  I wanted to live again, not be stuck in that cramped lab.  Actually, it was big enough.  It wasn't physically cramped, but being constantly watched and analyzed isn't fun and you feel like a little speck of dirt while Gero's eyes are on you.  Jenny felt the same way.

That day that we went out to an old, unused building.  Gero led the way in and pointed to four people chained to the wall.  "Kill them."

"What?!" One of them yelled.  

Another sat in horror, another observed us coolly.  The last one was hidden in shadows.

"Who are they?" Jenny asked.

"Does it matter?" he answered. "They are the scum of the earth.  They won't be missed.  None of them has a family and each is a criminal.  Kill them."

"How?  With our bare hands or what?"

He nodded.

She shrugged casually and walked to the first man on the left and began to beat him.  She seemed to be taking this lightly, but she had never killed before in her life.  I had, but I had done it with guilt.  Maybe no one else would ever have been able to tell, but I saw the remorse scrawled all over her face.  She didn't want to be doing this.  Neither did I.  I walked over to the last person on the right, the one who was hidden in shadows.  I walked up to him and grabbed the collar of his shirt to begin pummeling him, but then as my eyes adjusted I saw his face.  It was Cale.      


	5. Chapter 5

The Story of My Life

Chapter 5

"Cale?" I gasped.  I stepped away from him, wondering if this was some sort of cruel hoax or that my mind was playing tricks on me. 

Gero was quiet, watching the scene in a detached manner from a shadowed corner.  Jenny had heard me and I heard her walking toward me.  Cale sat still, his pale face looking me over, but showing no emotion.  His eyes were cold, as if he refused to acknowledge me.  Myself, well, I was in shock.  I'm sure my mouth must have been hanging open stupidly.  Jenny appeared at my side and she too looked down at Cale, his huddled form shivering slightly.    

"Kill them or I'll kill you," Gero finally said.  "I have other test subjects I can use in place of you."

I looked at him angrily, I remember.  It seemed unthinkable then that I would have to kill Cale.  He was like a brother; he was close to me.  I didn't want to do that.  Like I said, he reminded me of myself at his age.  I wanted to help him get through life the way that Kyle had helped me.  Yeah, maybe Cale did join the gang and maybe gangs are supposed to be vicious, but I really didn't feel like going through all that bullshit anymore.  The whole point of me going through with these operations and tests was to be able to be free from the gang.  This way, I would be free, I could lead a normal life and the people who wanted out of the gang could disperse and lead their own lived 24-7 and never have to deal with a gang ever again if they chose not to.  Maybe I was being a little too idealistic, but I was desperate.  My only thoughts were to get away from it all and if I could help Cale and a few of the others that really didn't belong in a gang, were too young to be messed up by that kind of life, then hey, another plus.  I didn't want to go through all of this, concentrating on liberating us all only to kill the guy who was like family to me.  I wanted to get away from the life of killing and being ruthless.  Little did I know what Gero intended me for…

"Sorry Cale," Jenny said before she punched his stomach.  He doubled over in pain and a moan escaped his lips.

"What are you doing," I cried as I grabbed her arm to stop her next punch.  "That's Cale! He's our friend, don't you remember him?"

She stopped and looked at me in the same cold manner as Cale had.  "I know, but it's either him or us.  I choose us, Bobby.  Besides, by not killing him, you're only preserving his life by a day at the most.  Look at him.  He's too weak to even get out of here on his own even if he managed to get out of those chains.  You're doing him more of a favor by killing him now and getting it over with.  Otherwise, Dr. Gero is just either going to do it himself or he'll get one of his other test subjects that he's talking about to do it."

Cale was being strangely silent all this time.  I kept expecting him to say something in defense of himself.  He seemed so against me, I didn't even care if he shouted obscenities at me, as long as he said something.  He seemed to sense that his silence was unnerving me.  He slowly opened his mouth and revealed that he no longer had a tongue, but still his eyes were cold.   His eyes showed that he had been in dark places, had seen too many disturbing things at his young age.  It was as if those eyes belonged to a hardened criminal, no love or hope to be found anywhere within them, only hate.

I turned angrily to Gero.  "You didn't have to do that!  What good did it do anyway?"

"I didn't do it," he replied coolly.  "It's been a long time since you've seen anyone you used to know.  A lot can happen in a year."  It's true.  A lot can happen in a year.  That brought me right back to wishing to see my kid.  Even if I could only look through a window to see it, I would have been happy.  

Jenny killed Cale swiftly, probably more for my sake than for Cale's.  She killed one of the others there and I killed the remaining two with many reservations.  That whole event was a test planned by Dr. Gero.  He wanted to see our level of eagerness to kill, or at least our feelings about it.  I must say, it really shocked me to see how easily Jenny went through with it.  I understand her logic, but I wasn't able to go through with it with the ease she seemed to possess.

Afterwards, Gero led us back to the lab, denying my requests to finally go see my daughter.  That pissed me off to no end.  How could he deny me the right to see my daughter?  If I was stable enough to go out and kill someone, then I was stable enough to go and see my family.  He never let me out though and I've always resented him for it.

"He lied," Jenny whispered to me as we were going to bed later that night.  "He was right that he didn't cut Cale's tongue off himself, but he sure as hell had a lot to do with it."

"What do you mean?" I asked.  

"We did it, basically.  I remember.  You were the one who cut out his tongue, but Gero was giving us orders.  It was a while ago.  He was trying out new chemicals in our systems…it was to get rid of our thoughts…even our memories."

I had nothing to say.  I looked at her in disbelief.

"It's true," she urged.  "I remember because it didn't work as well on me for some reason.  I don't know what he's trying to do, but I have a feeling that whatever it is, it isn't good.  Why would he want us to forget who we are?  I mean, at first it worked, but slowly it wore off and I was myself again…of course, I wasn't stupid enough to let him know.  You on the other hand, it didn't wear off of you as soon as it had for me.  You haven't been yourself for a long time now."

I shook my head.  "You're wrong."

"No, I'm not.  Recently, yes, you have been okay.  Maybe you just don't remember, but I swear you've been acting…I don't know, like an android."

We looked at each other for almost a full minute.  It was hard for me to believe, but that was exactly it…Gero was making us into androids, this wasn't some sort of experiment.  I don't know why I didn't seem to understand that before then.  All the clues were there, I could have figured it all out on my own, but I didn't.  I think I panicked then.  If I couldn't remember parts of my life, like what Jenny was talking about, then what would stop him from completely controlling our minds?  What would stop him from making us demolish a whole city with the energy that he had been teaching us to use?  These ideas troubled me whenever I was in my normal state.

By that time, I was nearly complete.  All that was left was for a few more metal plates to be put in and wires to be connected to them.  Somehow, through all of that, I had mostly retained my thoughts.  After the incident with Cale, Gero knew that whatever potion he had put in to get rid of my memory hadn't worked.  He did it again and I went through another period where I wasn't myself.  It always wore off and I would go for longer and longer periods of time where Gero wouldn't know that I wasn't his perfect little android.  I would go into those induced sleeps to have wires moved or fixed fearing that when I woke up I would never again remember who I was or that I had a family on the outside waiting for me.  Thankfully, those fears were never realized, even that last time where the last piece of equipment was implanted into my body.

I went into that final induced sleep.  That sleep lasted for three months.  Gero put in the last equipment he wanted in me, moved things around, and made some last finishing touches.  When I awoke, I didn't remember anything at all.  I couldn't access anything in my mind that had anything to do with my past life.  As of the moment I woke up, my mind essentially belonged to Dr. Gero. 

Dr. Gero had been right, he had worked the metal extensively through my body.  I don't know what is metal and what is human.  I like the way my body turned out though. I'm much faster than I used to be when I was a human.  The machines contained in my body don't make a hint of noise. 

My eyes have changed, though. They are still a light blue, but now they are unnatural, most likely the only thing that might give away the fact that I'm not human…well, at least by just looking at me.  These eyes that I have, they are almost a signature of Dr. Gero, just like the red ribbon that is sewed onto my clothes.  They aren't real, they're some sort of bionic material and the name is too long me for to bother with right now.  I've never been one to get into technical stuff.  My eyes see so much more than what a human can see.  If I just want to see what humans see, I can do that.  Attack mode lets me be aware of everything around me.  I can zoom in to see something closer, as one might do with a camera.  My eyes also pick up infrared.  I have night vision and many other capabilities.  I can assess anything I look at.  It's almost as if I can think with my eyes, if you can understand that.

I went on for a few more weeks of what I call my true activation without having all of my memories present, but slowly, they started to come back.  Flashes of Rachel's face and some of our more intimate moments would appear in my mind. I would see her sitting in front of the TV, or looking down at her stomach, smiling at me.  I would hear her laughing and sometimes I could even remember how she used to smell and how she felt when I held her.   The memories startled me because they were so jumbled and incoherent.  Remember, I thought I was an android and had not been human.

It must be confusing to you, whoever is reading this.  I'm sure that maybe you can't keep up with all the times that I was activated or deactivated or how stable my mind was in those times.  The thing is, it was not a stable time and it was difficult for me to cope with it.  Being deactivated and reactivated so many times and never really knowing who you are when you recover your senses is quite a shock.    

Anyway, I would see Rachel.  I remember wondering who that girl was, why did she seem so familiar? At that time, though, I was detached.  I wasn't actually concerned with who she was, it was just a passing thought.  I didn't care about her.  I saw her and wondered why I was thinking about her when in fact to my knowledge I had never seen her before in my life.  I was mainly concerned with whatever Dr. Gero told me to do.  He always wanted me sparring with 18 so that we could become good fighters.  Our knowledge for whatever technique we wanted to use was there already, but he wanted us to know what being in a real combat was like when our knowledge was put to the test.  

He was created another android, Android 19.  This one was fat and completely made of metal and wires. There was nothing human inside of 19.  Dr. Gero was also making improvements to another android, one previously created called Android 16.  We never really knew what he was created for until we released him.  Those two androids had much less power than we had and still have.  Dr. Gero thought he found a way to get around 16's clumsiness by giving Android 19 the ability to store energy from ki being thrown at him.  We helped with the creation of Android 19, actually.  We weren't enlisted to help the doctor, but when we weren't training we would sit and watch him as he worked on the new android and we handed him tools or held wires while he worked.  It was during those times when I wasn't active that the memories would suddenly appear in my mind.

One of those nights spent secluded in the lab helping Dr. Gero was the night that I ruined Dr. Gero's plans for us.  That night I had a particularly long string of memories washing over me and suddenly something inside of me clicked.  I became aware of what was going on and this time, I not only understood the memories that had been haunting me for the past few weeks, but I also had memories of all that lost time from the other lapses in my memory.  I understood everything.  But with that understanding came anger.  I wanted to get out of the lab and see Rachel.  The second I remembered everything, I snapped and tried in desperately and helplessly to escape from the lab.  Eighteen apparently had been hiding the fact that she too had regained her memories, though how long ago that was, I don't know.  She got up from the chair she had been sitting on and punched Dr. Gero, temporarily keeping him from hindering our escape.  Unfortunately, we underestimated him.  While she had knocked the wind out of him, that didn't stop him from pulling out a little black remote out of his pocket.  I turned around to see how far behind he was to assess how long I had before he tried to stop us.  I saw that little remote in his hand and I wondered what he was doing with it.  He aimed it in our general direction as he held his side and he pressed a red button.  My limbs froze and then there was darkness.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Okay, I don't know if you noticed or not, but this chapter is kind of shorter than the others.  The reason for that is…I don't really have one other than the fact that I couldn't think of what else to write.  I wanted to end the chapter where I did, but I couldn't think of things to add in between.  Anyway, just a heads up, unless I get a great burst of creativity that makes me write more than what I'm planning, there will only be 2 more chapters to this story.  After that, if it's before I get out of school, you'll have to wait until the middle of June or maybe even July before I start on the parallel story.

TO ALL READERS!

I want your opinion, please e-mail me or leave a review to answer this:  Do you want me to write this story making the changes needed for a Future 17 story or do you want me to continue this one or both.  If I write the Future 17 one, it's going to be darker and depending if I put in all the stuff I've been thinking about putting in, I might have to post it on another site for being too graphic.  But I might tone it down to an R story.  I don't know.  The ending for this story is basically going to be and ending, it won't really leave an opportunity for a sequel and if I continue the story it would take place a while after the ending of this story.  If you want me to continue the story, then you have to give me ideas for what you want me to do, but don't worry, since you don't know the ending I'll remind you again *hopefully if I remember* in the last chapter.

TO PEOPLE ON MY MAILING LIST

I need you guys to keep updating your e-mail and sign up for the mailing list again when you change your e-mail.  I know a lot of you have changed them, don't worry I do it too ;) but I've been getting a lot of my updates sent back to me because there is no address for me to send them to anymore.  So, if you want to know when I update, you have to sign up again.  Thanks!

That's all from me, see ya!

~Lady Branwen~ 


	6. Chapter 6

[Disclaimer:  Isn't it obvious?  I don't own DBZ…]

**The Story of My Life**

Chapter 6

It was a long time later that I woke up again.  Dr. Gero was standing in front of me, but he had changed.  He was no longer a mere human, but had changed himself into an android.  I suppose it was because he did not trust us with being able to do his bidding any longer.  I noticed his change in appearance with little curiosity, but didn't mention any surprise that I might have had.  I watched him for a moment before I realized that 18 was also there.  We were both quiet and still.  I remembered why we had been deactivated and I looked at her to see if she remembered only to find that she was already looking at me.  Dr. Gero began to talk and to give us instructions.  I noticed that his hand was clenched around something.  Curious, I let my gaze fall down to his hand and saw a little black box that infuriated me.  I looked at my twin again and she was staring coldly at our creator.

Almost as if during our time deactivated we had orchestrated the entire act, we joined forces and killed him.  There were no words, only the act itself and I relished punching him repeatedly and kicking his head off of his shoulders.  That was the greatest satisfaction I had gotten for a long time.  It was for all the many days that I hadn't been able to see my child.  It was for the life that he had stolen from us unwillingly and the deception he had used to trick us into being his puppets.

After we were done, we had a little scuffle with the Z Warriors, but we went away, taking an android we knew about, Android 16, with us.  When we had gotten far enough away, we activated him.  What right had we to keep him cooped up?  We weren't stupid.  Most likely those warriors would destroy the lab so that it would never be usable again.  Taking 16 with us would be the only decent thing to do, right?  

At this point, I had an idea of what was all going on, but I wasn't completely in control of emotions and not having to follow Gero's orders even after his death.  I suppose he might have changed some circuitry or something to make sure I would never have complete control over myself again.  So I ended up thinking of everything as a game.  Eighteen, of course, thought I was being childish, she being the more mature one throughout our lives together.  But she went along, having nothing better to do, or deciding just to humor me for a while.  So off we went in order to complete the mission Gero had set for 16 to complete; 16 was to kill Goku.  The fact that someone would be killed did not affect my emotions directly.  Instead, I had a nagging sense deep down that perhaps we shouldn't, perhaps we didn't have to complete that mission.  But, it was only a very small feeling and it was nowhere near enough to force me to change my mind.  As I said, it was a game.  And I wanted to win.  After having nothing to do for a very long time, after not being out in the real world for so long, I wanted to explore.  

You might think that I should have thought of my child.  After all, I did relish in killing Gero for taking me from it, but for some reason I seem to have forgotten it in all the excitement.  Feeling the warmth of the sun was new to me, I guess like how it is for a baby.  Everything was new.  

Again, on our way to Goku's the Z Warriors found us and we fought them.  Eighteen and I made short work of them, Eighteen breaking Vegeta's arm and knocking him and a boy with purple out.  I joined in only after that boy had decided to help Vegeta.  Off we went again to search for Goku after 18 had given the short man named Krillen a kiss.  He was dumbfounded and I can't say that I wasn't.  I thought it odd that she would do something like that, but hey, maybe she wanted to get under his skin.  She never did tell me what was going on in her head at that moment.

Eventually, we found Goku's house, but he wasn't there.  We searched and searched until we were stopped by the Namek.  This time, it was my turn to fight.  Unfortunately, our fight was interrupted by a green bug known as Cell.  I had no idea what was going on, but suddenly I found myself on the Namek's side and we joined forces to fend Cell off.  I have to admit, I was cocky and didn't believe that I would be in any trouble.  I was, after all, the strongest of all the warriors without a limit to the use of energy.  But I soon found out how wrong I was.  After only a short while, I saw that I was having trouble dodging from Cell.  His hits were quick and strong, while I could barely block and attempt to attack back.  Cell didn't even seem to be having any difficulties, in fact, he looked like he was enjoying himself and was not at his highest attacking power.  This was greatly annoying me.  I couldn't believe that I was going to be defeated.  

Suddenly, I slipped up and I saw Cell's tail open up into an endless black hole leading into his body.  Everything clicked in that moment.  I knew what my fate was, I knew that I would make Cell stronger, I knew that I had to fight to stay alive.  I couldn't give in, I had to fight or else I would never have the chance to explore more of the real world or to see the child.  Yes, in that moment, I remembered about it.  Unfortunately, I was no match for Cell's power and his tail swung down at me from above, covering half of my body instantly.    

Inside it was like space; there was nothing there, I couldn't feel the tail around me.  It was so strange.  Even stranger was the feeling of my energy leaving and knowing that I was now merging with this giant grasshopper and then I blacked out.

Now I can talk to you about _me.  The me writing this at this very moment woke up far away from any sort of civilization after Cell was destroyed.  I woke up slightly disheveled, groggy, and annoyed.  Where the hell was I?  What had happened?  In fact, what had happened was the more pressing matter in my mind.  I wanted to know who and what Cell was and why, however they had managed to kill Cell, I stayed alive.  It would serve to reason that since I had merged with Cell and thus became a part of him, if he died, then I should have died.  Cell certainly wasn't anywhere near me.  So why was I here?  Or was I really dead?  But no, I sensed my sister; I had to find her first before I thought anything else or went and did something about my predicament.  I made my way slowly back to where I sensed my sister's ki.  My energy had been depleted somewhat.  I didn't have the same strength as I had being an android.  I'm still an android, of course, but I know now that the bomb Gero had implanted has been removed.  I'm mostly android, but I guess you could say that I have become more human than what Dr. Gero had created.   _

Anyway, Eighteen was flying around, seemingly aimlessly. I found her and asked her about what had happened after I had been absorbed.

"…Krillen loves me."

"What?"

"He wanted me wished back and to be human again.  He loves me."

"The little bald guy?  Him?  Eighteen, come on…you're not falling for him are you?" I asked incredulously.  

She looked at me with as much emotion on her face as her android self would allow.  I made me angry.  I guess it's that I was jealous at the time.  I didn't have anyone but her…she had always been a constant in my life.  But now I knew what she meant to do.  It was written all over her face. I knew she would leave.  She wasn't about to forego love in order to keep me company for the rest of her life.  It was selfish of me to even consider forcing her to stay.  She would leave.

Then it occurred to me, "I she is leaving and is going to make a new life for herself, why not find my own?"  I had changed a lot since the last time Rachel had seen me.  Would she be mad at me?  Would she be upset that I had left her to raise a baby all on her own?  I know I would be angry.  I was almost afraid to confront her… Rachel always had quite a temper. Well, if it all didn't work out, at least I would have seen my kid at least once, my one mantra throughout all my turmoil.  

And that brings me to now.  I live in a cabin deep in the woods, with only the animals to keep me company, if they even decide to come near me. Eighteen and Krillen visit once in a while with their daughter, Marron.  Marron is three years old.  And you know, it's been 5 years since I had last seen Rachel, and three years since that day I woke up and had desperately wanted to see Rachel.  But, as you can tell, I didn't go.  I never worked up the courage to go talk to her.  

I don't know why I've written this all out; maybe it's some sort of therapy.  Perhaps, someday, my kid will read this and will know everything I've gone through and will sympathize with me.  I think maybe this will be the only way I'll ever express emotions.  I can smile and laugh, but it's not quite the same as how a regular human smiles or laughs.  It's calculated, a careful measurement of the stretching of the muscles around my mouth, and a careful measurement of the pitch of my laughter.  But having this, my feelings expressed in some sort of way, may help my child to understand me and why I am the way I am.

- - - - - - - - - - - - -

Seventeen set the pen down that he had been writing with.  He picked up the stack of papers and looked at it for a moment.  He set it back down and looked out the window of his small cabin.  The trees surrounded him on all sides, shielding him from the world, covering his world in darkness.  And that is how he felt; dark, impenetrable.  He had a dark life, one he didn't want the world to know about, and had created his own little world where he wouldn't have to deal with anyone else.  Except for his sister, who visited him every month, with or without her husband.  

After taking a deep breath, Seventeen gathered his courage and picked up the stack of papers, folded them all and grabbed his leather jacket that Eighteen and Krillen had given him as a gift to use during the colder months.  He found that it actually did come in handy.  Now he walked to the door and stepped out of the cabin that had become his life.  He was no longer the hermit that Eighteen had been calling him for staying in the cabin for months on end without going out.  Now he was out in the world, breathing in the fresh air of the forest and watching rabbits scamper playfully by him.  

He took to the sky and made his way by memory to the little house that he remembered so well; the house where he had last seen Rachel.  

It was dirty, beginning to fall apart slightly, but it wasn't much worse off than the last time he had seen it.  There was an old dark blue car sitting in the driveway, a car he had never bought, a car that Rachel had never had.  His heart skipped a beat as he thought, "Maybe she's gone…"  As that thought entered his head, Seventeen found himself walking across the lawn right up to the window where he could look inside.  It was no use simply going to the door and seeing some stranger and having to explain himself.  Seventeen thought it would be a better idea if he just looked inside first before deciding whether to go or to stay.  

The interior was worn and shabby, also not unlike how he had last seen it.  No one seemed to be in at the moment, though he wondered where the people who lived here were.  Nonetheless, he was disheartened and prepared himself to go home after his grand failure at reentering the world.  He turned away, but a flicker of movement caught his eye just as he had turned.  He quickly turned back to look in the window and saw the most wonderful thing he had ever hoped to see: Rachel, with the same fiery red hair pulled back into a ponytail and still as svelte as the day he had laid eyes on her, and his child, his _daughter _running into the room in front of her mother.  A smile crept onto Seventeen's face, a real smile, not the ones he practiced and faked, but a genuine human smile that expressed his happiness to the world.  

The little girl was everything he had hoped his child would be: playful, sweet, beautiful, and best of all, happy.  She had her mother's shape eyes and her mother's nose, but other than those two things, she was a carbon copy of Seventeen, right down to the dimples he had when he smiled.  She was so vibrant and bouncy, not a care in the world except for her own little world.  She danced around the room, talking to Rachel about something, then suddenly she stopped and he realized that she was looking directly at him.

"Oh shit…"

All he could think of was, "_Too soon, too soon!"  He had wanted to stay there, locked in time, watching his daughter forever so he could memorize her, have at least one memory of her.  Who knew how this would turn out?  Would Rachel even consider letting him back into her life?  Panic overcame him and he wanted so badly to tear himself from the window and run away, never to face his past and his future.  But he couldn't stop watching his perfect daughter, his little princess, Daddy's little girl.  She smiled and waved at him, talked to her mom and pointed to the window.    Now more than ever he wanted to turn away, but he still found that he couldn't.  "Does she recognize me?" he wondered.  "How can she recognize me if she's never met me?"_

Now Rachel was looking at him.  Her mouth was slack, tears springing to her eyes with barely concealed joy, but her hands were clenched tightly by her sides.  He recognized this at once.  Hopefully, those clenched fists would not come in contact with him, only her open arms and loving kisses would greet him at the door.  But, once Rachel got in her moods, there would be no stopping her wrath.  She marched purposefully to the door and flung it open.  Seventeen was already there, waiting, thinking of what he could say that would calm her down.  He didn't want his child's first experience being in his presence to be a bad one.  He didn't want her to have bad memories of him as he did of his own father.

"What the hell is your-"

"I love you."

Her reproach was cut short by his proclamation.  She stood looking at him, searching his eyes for the truth the way she had always done.  She could tell he was being truthful.  

"Please, let me come inside and explain…"

"Hi Daddy!" the little girl squealed as she hugged his leg.

He shook his head in wonder.  "So she does know me?"

Rachel shrugged almost sheepishly.  "I never threw out any of the photos I had of you.  Annie wanted to know who you were one day, so I guess they came in handy."

"Hi Annie," he said as he knelt down to her level.  "How are you, sweetie?"

"I'm okay.  You have the same hair as me!"

"Yeah, I guess I do," he said, holding his hair out for Annie to look at as she did with hers.  She giggled and it was such a nice sound to hear.  Every minute he spent with Annie, he found himself becoming completely drawn to her.  Seventeen had no idea what he would do if Rachel simply kicked him out and banned him from ever coming back.  He picked her up and walked into the house, sitting down on a lumpy couch.  

"Where have you been?"  It was asked calmly, with just a hint of anger, but it was not a reproach.  It was a simple question that everyone knew needed to be answered.

Seventeen sighed.  "I don't think you're going to believe me, and I don't blame you.  But what I'm going to say is the truth.  I hope you accept it for what it is and don't want me to lie about where I've been.  But if I have to lie and tell you that I needed a break from you or that I was scared of commitment, or whatever else you want to hear, then I'll say it.  I want to be here with you, and with Annie, for the rest of my life."

Rachel nodded, willing to hear what he had to say.  Annie scooted onto his lap and then he told them his story.

- - - - - - - - - - - - -

"Wow, you can fly?"  Annie looked up at him with astonishment.  It was obviously her favorite part of his story.

Rachel looked at him skeptically, but she had sensed a change in him.  His eyes were lighter for one thing.  Also, when he talked, it was a bit monotonous, nothing like how he had used to speak.  

"Bobby, are you really telling the truth?"

"Of course," he replied with the same nonchalant playfulness that had been his stigma in his earlier years.  This she recognized.  "Remember, Eighteen…I mean Jenny, turned out the same way.  She has a husband and a daughter now, but she is still an android for the most part.  Just like me.  If you want, you can go talk to her about it, see if I'm lying or not."  He really hoped that she would take his word, but his story was near unbelievable and if Rachel wanted and needed proof, he wouldn't deny it to her.  

He had, apparently, already won Annie over.  She was clinging to him like a vine on a wall.  As long as she was left alone and to her own devices, she would stay with her father forever.  But at any moment, Rachel had the power to yank her away from her father just as a mean spirited boy had the power to rip the vine from the wall. 

"I guess…I'll accept it for now.  But at some point, I do want to see Jenny.  I want her to confirm what you've told me."

Maybe it wasn't the answer that he had been hoping for, but it was okay.  He couldn't complain.

"So, what happened to you?"

Rachel launched into a long-winded story about her life after he had left.  The highlights were that she had quit school in order to take care of Annie better.  She didn't trust people in this neighborhood to take care of Annie for a long time.  Rachel had gone to work full time and had paid for a day care center to watch Annie while she was at work.  Bobby felt a pang of guilt creeping upon him.  He had always wanted Rachel to make something of herself.  She didn't deserve to be working at a mediocre department store when she could be making more money as a good veterinarian.  

"Listen, why don't you save the money you use to pay for the day care?  Leave Annie with me while you go to work and you can save up some money to take the rest of the classes you need to become a vet?"

She snorted.  "Do you know how long that would take?  I only have half of it done!"

"It's still more than if you had no courses completed already, right?  Besides, in the long run, what's going to work out for you better?  A job that doesn't pay well and you stay working there for the rest of your life, or working there for a little while, then switching to a better paying job?"

She saw his point and shrugged.  "I don't know."

"Don't tell me you've come to accept this life?"  He leaned forward, "Please, don't say that.  That's not anything my Rachel would say."

"Well, Bobby, you've been gone a long time.  I've changed since then."

"No, no, no!  You can't let this place get to you!  You have to move up in the world.  I always knew you were smart and you could get any job you wanted once you set your mind to it.  Now that I'm back, you don't have to worry so much about Annie.  I can help and you can get enough money eventually to move to a better neighborhood."

"How do I know that you're not here to take Annie from me?"  Perhaps this was the question that had been burning in her mind the most prominently.  

He felt that his chance might be slipping from his grasp, but he couldn't find words to say.  "I guess you don't.  Look, for the past few years I've lived in a cabin in a remote part of the woods.  I wouldn't want to take Annie back there for any reason.  I have nothing there.  It was just a place for me to sleep in.  My life is here with you."

Rachel stood up and walked over to him and sat down beside him.  "I guess we can give it a try."  Then a sly smile spread on her face, a familiar one that he easily recognized and he awaited her passionate kiss.

"Yay!  Now you don' have to cry for Daddy anymore, Mommy!" Annie cried when her parents' lips locked.  "Daddy, can you take me flying?"

That began Bobby and Rachel's tenuous return to their relationship, but Annie acted as though she had always had a father.  She was immediately taken with him and would follow him wherever he went.  He was new at being a parent, so Annie helped him a little, pointing him in the right direction of parental duties and telling him which toys she liked better, what she preferred playing with.  She would play dolls, like any other girl, but she had a special fondness for toy cars and watching them speed around a fake track.  Bobby vowed that since she liked them so much, he would someday take her to a real car race.       

Rachel took Bobby's advice and continued her studies while she worked part time.  Her parents began giving her money again and she did eventually become a veterinarian, one of the better paid ones.  She saved enough money so that they all could move to a better neighborhood, a place that was safe for Annie to grow up in.  

Bobby and Rachel got married in the fall after Annie's 6th birthday and they invited everyone they knew.  Bobby was happy to have his sister there, especially since she was the maid-of-honor.  He made Krillen his best man.  Annie and Marron, of course, were the flower girls.  

Though facing a lot of problems through the years, and Rachel never quite understanding why he was gone and wondering if their story was true, Rachel and Bobby made the best of it and neither ever regretted marrying each other.  Bobby did show Annie his memoir when she had gotten older, around 16, when she could understand it.  Annie had no trouble understanding and loved him all the more for what he had gone through in order to be her dad.  She believed him and loved him for what he was, and that was all Bobby needed to be happy for the rest of his life on Earth.

~_~_~_~_~_~_~_~               The End               ~_~_~_~_~_~_~_~

Well, I know I said it would be two more chapters, but this is how it ended it.  If I would have cut this story down to 3,000 words a chapter, then the second chapter would have had maybe only a thousand words to it.  If I shortened it to 2,000 words each, then it would have been too small for having to wait since May for another chapter.  Sorry about that!  Heh heh.  

Just one thing about this chapter.  I know maybe some of you will notice that towards the end, I started interchanging Seventeen with Bobby.  I did it to show how he was no longer considering himself as an android and was willing to pretend to be a complete human and embracing his old self.

TO EVERYONE!

Thanks for reading this, I appreciate all the reviews and I'm glad that so many people liked it.  This one has been fun to write and because of it, this is how I will always think of 17's past had been.  Thanks again!

~Lady Branwen~


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